Recent News:Awarded with a National Science Foundation CAREER grant!
Honored with a Distinguished Scholarship/Creative Work Award
In May 2021, I was awarded an award from North Central College recognizing my scholarship over the past three years. My scholarship reflects my dual expertise in both plant ecology and undergraduate pedagogy. It transforms and inspires every aspect of my work – the structure of my courses, the mentorship I provide to students in their co-curricular research experiences, and my professional research identity.
Every course I teach is fueled by the knowledge I gained from Indorf, Weremijewicz, et al. (2019), in which I investigated and found that students enormously benefited from course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) compared to those in traditional labs. Students reported increased psychosocial factors, retention, persistence, and graduation in STEM. At NC, even in a general education course, I guide students through an inquiry-based research project to develop their scientific literacy skills and become informed, engaged citizens. Additionally, this scholarship strongly influenced the curriculum of the new biology introductory course and I have used this opportunity to continue my research in pedagogy. When I mentor students in the field of biological research, I use Weremijewicz and Janos (2019) to gently introduce students to my field and work. This scholarship comprises two products, a peer-reviewed paper and a professional video, that both review the literature and illustrate a novel research method I created for the field. I have also used these products to introduce students to a CURE in a new course I developed, BIOL325 Plant Interactions in a Changing World. Because of the method’s novelty and wide application, a group of students yielded publishable results that we are currently writing up to submit to a top peer-reviewed journal. In my independent research within plant ecology, I have carved out my own niche by specializing in “common mycorrhizal networks (CMNs),” which are belowground webs of mutualistic fungi that connect the roots of neighboring plants. The fungi that form these networks, mycorrhizae (myco = fungus, rhiza = root), scavenge the soil to exchange mineral nutrients for sugars from plants. Thus, interconnecting CMNs become a belowground market of bartering and trading between different species of plants and fungi. In Weremijewicz et al. (2018), I merged ecology with stable isotope chemistry to find that Big Bluestem likely maintains its dominance in the prairie by benefiting from CMNs and suppressing the growth of a subdominant species. I will expand on this scholarship with students this summer to investigate the role of roots in the belowground market. In Biology, peer-reviewed articles are the primary criteria for scholarship as they are the clearest, most readily recognized evidence of scholarly excellence. Their notability is determined in the tier of journal in which they are published. The three artifacts I wish to submit for consideration have been published in the top 25% of journals in their field. Furthermore, the video has been viewed almost 5,000 times by individuals from 192 institutions globally. New paper out on using rotated cores to investigate common mycorrhizal networks!
If you've ever wondering about HOW we run our experiments, we've published a protocol and accompanying video of our methods. Check them out here: https://www.jove.com/video/59338/investigation-plant-interactions-across-common-mycorrhizal-networks
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